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Online Revolution's Latest Twist: Job Interviews With a Computer

With a pick comb in his hair and his shirt untucked, Roland Martin wandered into the Good Guys electronics store this afternoon and immediately secured a 30-minute employment interview. Not only did the store disregard his appearance, it welcomed his impulsive job hunt. Besides, the interviewer could not see him.

Mr. Martin's interview in this San Francisco suburb was conducted by computer, making him a participant in a trend in retail hiring. Dozens of big-name retailers, including Target, Hollywood Video, Macy's and Longs Drug Stores, are replacing paper applications and in-person interviews with computer kiosks in the initial screening of applicants.

The computer programs query prospective employees on job history and work habits. They then typically delve into psychological tests that the companies say can help match job skills and personalities with openings. Employers say the automation gives them an edge in the tight labor market, enabling them to sift through applications quickly, weed out duds, identify talent and, as in the case of Mr. Martin, attract candidates who might not otherwise have taken time to apply.

But critics ask how a computer program can rightly judge a person, even if only in an initial screening. For their part, privacy advocates say employers, and companies hired to administer the kiosks, are creating vast databases of applicants' psychological profiles -- as potentially damaging as a bad credit rating -- that could find a larger audience than the applicants expect.

And this could be only the beginning for the automated interview. Before long, employers envision that job seekers will apply from home over the Internet. As technology advances, companies even foresee putting prospective employees into virtual video environments to see how they might react to stressful situations.

''It's just a matter of time before the technology advances and before more companies get involved,'' said Alan G. Frost, director of management development for Home Depot, which uses computer kiosks for job applications in all of its roughly 900 stores. ''This gives us a great opportunity to have tremendously accurate hiring and, No. 2, it saves on labor costs.''

Mr. Frost said the kiosks, which administer a 40- to 60-minute interview, are paying off for Home Depot. He said the procedure did not waste managers' time scoring applications and tests. And he said the turnover rate among new employees fell 11.4 percent in the 12 months after stores started using the kiosks. One reason, he said, is that the kiosks show videos that give applicants a clear idea of the job demands, whereas store managers, eager to hire employees, may understate the stresses of a Home Depot job.

''We're not doing away with face-to-face interviews, but they come later in the process,'' he said. ''We're not wasting time interviewing the wrong people who don't have the job skills you've proven you need here.''

Unlike Home Depot and Mirage Resorts, the Las Vegas-based hotel chain, both of which have created their own computerized interview systems, many retailers use a third-party company to operate the kiosks.

Dozens rely on Decision Point Systems Inc. of Beaverton, Ore., whose clients include Macy's West, Duane Reade, Target and Blockbuster Video. Decision Point processed one million applications for clients last year and says it will handle more than three million this year.

The Decision Point kiosks, like the one Mr. Martin used at the Good Guys, include an eight-inch monitor attached to a miniature keyboard and number pad. The interview usually starts with about 15 questions meant to weed out clearly undesirable candidates, like those who decline to take a drug test required by a company, or those who say they are younger than 16. Applicants who fail the initial test are told the company has no suitable openings.

After that, the questions vary from company to company, depending on the skills or personality traits being sought. For example, the roughly 90 questions on the Good Guys application are heavily weighted toward the applicant's view of drugs and alcohol in the workplace, and how the prospective employee might react in stressful situations.

At Target, the multiple-choice questions include more elaborate hypothetical situations, like how an employee would react to a theft, and questions about social views, such as whether drunken driving laws are too strict and what percentage of Americans the applicant believes cheat on their taxes.

When the application is complete, the information is sent online to Decision Point. The company says that within 10 minutes it sends a three-page typed synopsis back to the store manager by fax or e-mail to help determine whether the candidate is worth pursuing.

The first two pages are fact sheets, indicating name, Social Security number, job history and the like. The third page is a computer analysis of the application and psychological test. It highlights ''admissions'' (like gaps in employment or dismissals) and ''omissions'' (like failure to include references) and suggests interview questions, like ''Why did you leave your previous job?''

Finally, it summarizes the personality profile by giving one of three ratings: green (good candidate), yellow (manager needs to dig deeper), or red (warning). The profile of a candidate in the yellow zone might read, ''May not follow rules'' or ''May not be honest.''

The use of psychological tests is nothing new. But privacy advocates say their use in automated form and their storage in databases could become a major concern.

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Tara Lemmey, president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based privacy advocacy group, said candidates had no choice but to submit sensitive information ''for a job they may not get to a third-party company they don't realize they have a relationship with.''

In the case of Decision Point, there is a database of two million to three million applications that have been processed in the last three years, said the chief executive, Robert A. DeKoning. He said that while the company ''co-owns'' the data with its clients, its agreements with retailers currently forbid it to sell or divulge information about individual candidates.

Further, Mr. DeKoning said the company would not use such information without notifying the candidates when they apply. ''We would be morally obliged to do so,'' he said.

But Mr. DeKoning said Decision Point's clients might eventually find it useful to share the database information so that an applicant not qualified for one employer might be referred to a more suitable one. ''If we can make the case it's in their mutual best interest to share applicants, I know they would do that,'' he said.

Matthew W. Finkin, a law professor at the University of Illinois and a specialist in employment law, said applicants had reason to be concerned. He said that depending on how Decision Point's contracts with retailers were structured, some applicants might have the right to see the reports and contest their accuracy under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. But otherwise, he said, current law in most states would probably allow the sale or dissemination of such a database without prior notice.

In those cases, he said, the practice might be illegal only if the companies had made a written promise not to share the information. The kiosks administered by Decision Point do not tell applicants that the information will not be used for data mining or other purposes. Notwithstanding Decision Point's contract limitations with its clients, ''they could be free to send the information out,'' Mr. Finkin said.

Mr. Finkin said he was also concerned that the psychological profiles and grading were not always scientifically validated. As a result, he said, the employers may be creating and potentially disseminating profiles that are ''wildly in error.''

''The computer makes this all the more threatening,'' compared with paper-based profile tests, he said.

''If there is one judgment in a data bank,'' he said, ''no future manager has to sit across from the human being and make a judgment."

Even if applicants might avoid the kiosks once they know about the potential privacy risks, they appear to be flocking to them now.

Good Guys, which has 79 stores in Washington, California, Oregon and Nevada, said employment applications increased last year to 32,000 from 14,000 in 1998, a rise it attributed to the fact that applicants do not have to ask for a paper application and to the kiosks' appeal to the impulse job seeker.

That category includes Mr. Martin, 27, who came to the Daly City store with his father to return a television set and wound up applying for a job as a car-stereo installer.

He said the questions at the kiosk seemed easy, although he said he sometimes had trouble reading the dimly lit screen and typing on the small keys. Eventually, his father became impatient, and Mr. Martin decided to return some other time to do the complete interview.

The store does not tell applicants that the information winds up in a database, where it could find a wider audience. But Mr. Martin said he did not really mind.

''They should have listed that,'' he said. ''But I've got a pretty good background. I've got nothing to hide.''

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A version of this article appears in print on February 6, 2000, on Page 1001001 of the National edition with the headline: Online Revolution's Latest Twist: Job Interviews With a Computer. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe